"GrossFoodMemories" news and stories

Photo: Sarah LeTrent

Professional chefs prepare and enjoy a huge variety of different foods, some familiar to the rest of us, some beyond our usual pantry options, unless you're prone to stocking huitalacoche ( aka corn fungus), beef cheeks and tomato foam.

But even though they possess adventurous palates and have the opportunity to try ingredients and dishes from far and wide, that doesn't mean they like everything they eat. They all have one or two foods that just don't do it for them, their own personal food Kryptonite.

Slashfood asked some of the country's top chefs which edibles top their "thanks, but no thanks" list.

Rachael Ray
The ubiquitous Rachael Ray is famous for transforming all kinds of foods into 30-minute meals, but she has a serious aversion to mayonnaise. "Mayo is a four-letter word to me and I avoid using it when I can. It's all about that texture. I even make a no-mayonnaise potato salad is perfect for picnics since you don't have to worry about spoiling."

From 500 Snacks: Bright Ideas for Entertaining (1941), Culinary Arts Institute

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Corned Tongue in Aspic

A while, back, I wrote a post on emotionally-based food aversions -- both my own (tuna noodle casserole), and those of loved ones (scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, garlic). Little did I know this was going to open up Pandora's icebox. More than 75,000 people weighed in on our "What food hits your yuck button?" poll, and the comments thread is at the time of this writing, 1668 strong and counting. It seems that folks have just been looking for a place to spill their long-stewing food loathings, so we've counted down the top 20, weighting them for poll votes, number of mentions in comments, and level of vitriol incurred.

Want to keep the conversation flowing? See the initial post, or hurl forth in the comments below.

AOL Food: America's Most Hated Foods

The post that started it all: Guilty Displeasures

My husband and I have similar tastes in many things like music, decor, 19th century English literature, mayonnaise brands, etc. It makes for pretty smooth sailing day to day, but there are a few notable exceptions -- namely that if given a jar and a fork, I'll gobble down marinated herring like a rabid porpoise, and the very sight of cured fish sends him swimming as far upstream as he can get.

In the interest of marital accord, I hold off my pesce-centric binges for times when he's out of town or at his office on a weekend, and I was very amused to learn that other friends of mine make the same sort of bargains with their partners. One friend has a similar anchovy pact with her husband, another's wife goes into a broccoli rabe munching frenzy when he's away for a day or two, and my very own grandfather acquiesced to my grandmother's wishes that he only eat Limburger outside of the house. His compromise? He set up a cheese-eating outpost in their backyard.

Do any of you have culinary agreements with a partner, family member or roommate due to their repulsion or yours? Are there any foods that trump the bonds of love or friendship? Share 'em in the comments below.

More on Guilty Displeasures